Lindblad Expeditions

The National Geographic name needs no introduction. The Galápagos reputation does

The National Geographic partnership is not a badge on a brochure. It has run since 2004 and it shapes what actually happens on the ship: photo instructors, field scientists and naturalists sail as standard, not as a visiting lecturer wheeled out once a week. If you want somebody genuinely expert standing next to you at the rail explaining what you are looking at, this is the strongest reason on this site to pick a line.

The Galapagos is the part most British travellers get wrong. Other names come up first in conversation here, yet Lindblad took the first international travellers to the islands in 1967, before most of today's operators existed. That is a matter of record rather than a claim about who gets the best permits now, which is not something anyone should assert without evidence.

Worth knowing how they actually hold that position, because it is not what people assume. There is no grandfathered permit and no historic privilege: Galapagos operating licences sit with local Ecuadorian companies, and Lindblad expands by buying those companies along with their active park licences. Two former Celebrity ships joined the fleet that way, as National Geographic Gemini and National Geographic Delfina.

So if the Galapagos is on your list and Lindblad is not, that is worth a second look. Sixty years in one archipelago tends to show.